As far as I can tell, the paper is asking this question: if the world is just a wavefunction, why do we see it as a bunch of material things? Tegmark is trying to show that viewing the world as a bunch of material things is somehow special, that it optimizes some physical or mathematical quantity. That’s impressive if he can make it work, but I’m not sure it’s on the right track. Maybe a better question would be, which ways of looking at the wavefunction are the most likely to contain evolution? After all, minds are optimized for the kind of information processing that is useful for evolution. (Um, what I really meant here was “useful for increasing fitness”, thx Mark_Friedenbach.)
I think you’re on the right track in assessing the paper’s content. Here’s what I retained from a first reading: He considers a quantum density matrix. He decides to separate it in a way which minimizes the mutual information of the two parts, hoping that this might be the amount of conscious information present, but it always turns out to be less than a bit. Also, his method of division tends to produce parts which are static (energy eigenstates). So in dividing up the density matrix, he adds a second condition (alongside “minimize the mutual information”) so that the resulting parts will evolve over time. This increases the minimum mutual information, but not substantially.
I regard the paper as a very preliminary contribution to a new approach to quantum ontology. In effect he’s telling us how the wavefunction divides into things, if we assume that the division is made according to this balance between minimal mutual information and some dynamics in the parts. Then he can ask whether the resulting things look like objects as we know them (reasonably so) and whether they look like integrated information processors (less success there, in my opinion, even though that was the aim).
That’s too abstract, let’s go down a level, I just meant that if catching rabbits is good for your genes, you might evolve eyes that see rabbits, not wavefunctions transformed to Fourier space or something. Edited the bit you were responding to, I guess it was unclear.
Maybe a better question would be, which ways of looking at the wavefunction are the most likely to contain evolution?
But using your example, eyes don’t “contain” evolution. They provide a capability which is advantageous under natural selection, but they do not themselves perform evolution by natural selection. It’s not clear to me that we should expect any connection with consciousness and evolution, other than the historical description of how natural consciousness came to be.
As far as I can tell, the paper is asking this question: if the world is just a wavefunction, why do we see it as a bunch of material things? Tegmark is trying to show that viewing the world as a bunch of material things is somehow special, that it optimizes some physical or mathematical quantity. That’s impressive if he can make it work, but I’m not sure it’s on the right track. Maybe a better question would be, which ways of looking at the wavefunction are the most likely to contain evolution? After all, minds are optimized for the kind of information processing that is useful for evolution. (Um, what I really meant here was “useful for increasing fitness”, thx Mark_Friedenbach.)
I think you’re on the right track in assessing the paper’s content. Here’s what I retained from a first reading: He considers a quantum density matrix. He decides to separate it in a way which minimizes the mutual information of the two parts, hoping that this might be the amount of conscious information present, but it always turns out to be less than a bit. Also, his method of division tends to produce parts which are static (energy eigenstates). So in dividing up the density matrix, he adds a second condition (alongside “minimize the mutual information”) so that the resulting parts will evolve over time. This increases the minimum mutual information, but not substantially.
I regard the paper as a very preliminary contribution to a new approach to quantum ontology. In effect he’s telling us how the wavefunction divides into things, if we assume that the division is made according to this balance between minimal mutual information and some dynamics in the parts. Then he can ask whether the resulting things look like objects as we know them (reasonably so) and whether they look like integrated information processors (less success there, in my opinion, even though that was the aim).
Are they? Minds are optimized by evolution. That’s not the same as for evolution.
That’s too abstract, let’s go down a level, I just meant that if catching rabbits is good for your genes, you might evolve eyes that see rabbits, not wavefunctions transformed to Fourier space or something. Edited the bit you were responding to, I guess it was unclear.
You said:
But using your example, eyes don’t “contain” evolution. They provide a capability which is advantageous under natural selection, but they do not themselves perform evolution by natural selection. It’s not clear to me that we should expect any connection with consciousness and evolution, other than the historical description of how natural consciousness came to be.